As the final days of 2021 draw near, and we look forward (?!) to 2022, let’s reflect on the year that was. And it was a year.
Unlike previous posts, I’m mixing everything together–personal victories, political nonsense, the state of the world and so on. Let’s call it Earth Blend, available for $11.99 at your local Starbucks.
The Good
- I left a job I had come to actively not enjoy (hate is too strong a word)
- I did three and a half months of drawing prompts to start the year
- I did an Inktober prompt. Yes, one. Hey, it’s better than nothing!
- Summer forest fires, while bad in general, only led to a few smoky days in Metro Vancouver, down considerably from previous years
- I ran a lot more than in 2020, even with a late start of August
- I got a mirrorless camera (Canon EOS M50) and have had oodles of fun taking photos with the telephoto lens (nothing pervy, just naked birds)
- Dodged getting sick for another year
- I kept blogging. Funny cats, hooray!
- Contributed art and a trailer to an actual video game that will be for sale on Steam soon™
- Trump is no longer president
- The world did not blow up
The Bad
- Will no one rid me of this meddlesome pandemic?
- The COVID twins of Delta (“more people will get infected”) and Omicron (“everyone you know will get infected”)
- My weight is basically unchanged. It should be down. I blame myself and salty/sweet snacks.
- The heat dome (seriously, I never expected it to be hotter locally than the times I travelled through the Mojave Desert in the summer). 42 °C is pretty warm.
- The frozen dome. Yeah, that’s what I’m calling it. -14 °C is actually probably easier to manage than 42 °C, but it’s still, you know, rather chilly for these parts. We shattered temperature records at both ends of the thermometer in 2021. 2022 will reveal if this was a fluke or the start of a fun new climate trend.
- My fiction writing was, uh, moribund-though I did one writing prompt, so that’s a start!
- I didn’t read as much, since I no longer have a commute. This is both good and bad.
- I got a DisplayLink adapter, so I could fudge using my MacBook Air with dual displays, and have yet to get it working. A minor thing but still technically bad.
- I’m ending the year with sinus issues, possibly related to the cold weather, but likely not related to COVID-19
- U.S. democracy is looking a little beat-up after four years of Trump, the January 6th riots, and 40+ years of Republicans pushing for one-party rule
The Rest
- I still haven’t seen a movie in a theater since watching Onward in the first week of March 2020 and can’t say I miss the experience. I love being able to pause and go pee. It’s especially handy now that the average movie is ten hours long. To clarify, I go pee in the bathroom, as civilization expects.
- Justin Trudeau smelled a majority government within reach and instantly doomed any chance of it by calling an unnecessary election. The result was a Parliament virtually unchanged from before the election, proving the whole thing a waste of time. You’d think Trudeau might learn a lesson from this, but…we’ll see.
- Discovering a prominent anti-vaxxer was living in my building and later died of COVID-19 was a little weird
- I still like lists